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Continuing Our Quest to Discover Mary I's Connections To Continuing Our Quest to Discover Mary I’s Connections to Winchester and Beyond Intro: Hello and welcome to Hampshire HistBites. Join us as we delve into the past and go on a journey to discover some of the county's best and occasionally unknown history. We'll be speaking to experts and enthusiasts and asking them to reveal some of our hidden heritage, as well as share with you a few fascinating untold tales. Welcome back to a new episode of Hampshire HistBites. In this week’s episode, Johanna Strong delves deeper into the story of Queen Mary I and her links with Hampshire. But before we start, I just need to give a content warning. Content warning: This episode contains a sensitive topic that some people may find uncomfortable. It concerns phantom pregnancies. If you wish to avoid this 4-minute section, please skip between 11 minutes 15 seconds and 15 minutes 18 seconds. Johanna: Chances are if you’re listening to this podcast, you have some interest in royalty. Or at least Hampshire’s role in historical royalty. Or maybe you’re here to learn more about Hampshire in general! Whatever the reason, I do hope you learn something new about Wolvesey Castle, Hampton Court Palace, or Mary I and are inspired to visit either – or both! – of these sites once it’s safe to do so. Now, as they say, on with the show! One thing that hasn’t changed much from the time of the Tudors to today’s royal family is how often they move house. In the winter months, Elizabeth II will most often be found at Buckingham Palace, where she conducts her day-to-day official royal duties. At Christmas, she’s most often at Sandringham with her family. And then in the summer, she takes a working holiday and heads to Balmoral. This pattern of moving around with the seasons isn’t new. Mary I, England’s first crowned queen regnant and the topic of the podcast today, frequently moved her court from palace to palace, from city to city. While much of the time this was done in order to give servants a chance to clean the palaces after they had been used for months on end, sometimes the court moved for very special occasions. Two of these special occasions in Mary’s reign occurred in 1554 and 1555, at the time of her marriage to Philip II of Spain at Winchester Cathedral and at the time of her lying-in at Hampton Court Palace. In the modern day, most royal fans could tell you almost instantly where Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married. And most could give you at least a general physical description of the façade of the hospital where Catherine Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to her and Prince William’s children. Whereas the whereabouts of today’s royal family are generally much commented upon, we’ve practically forgotten about these important moments from Mary I’s life. It’s my goal today to change that and to give you insight into two of the most important places and moments of Mary I’s reign. We’ll start a little closer to home for our Hampshire listeners, at Winchester Cathedral. Well, more precisely, we’re not really going to be talking about the Cathedral itself but rather the Bishop’s palace located behind the Cathedral, a palace which is in ruins today. This is Wolvesey Castle, and it was the Bishop of Winchester’s home through the medieval period. What’s still there today is largely from the 12th century’s most famous occupant, Henry of Blois, the brother of King Stephen. Let’s rewind to July 1554, to July 19th at 3pm to be exact. Philip II has just arrived in Southampton. The following Monday – July 23rd – he left Southampton for Winchester to meet his future wife Mary. Philip’s retinue on this journey was so large that Elizabethan chronicler Raphael Holinshed and his co- authors’ – who put together the famous Holinshed’s Chronicles – record that there were more than two thousand horses. Upon arriving in Winchester, Philip made his way immediately to the Cathedral and was met by the Lord Chancellor and the Bishops of Durham, Ely, London, Lincoln, and Chichester, the clergy all being – as Scottish writer John Elder put it in one of his sixteenth-century letters – “mitred, coped, and staved”. Once his prayers and the worship were finished, he retired to the Dean’s House, which had been “gorgeously prepared for him”. As Holinshed and his colleagues tell us, “the Queen herself was lodged at the Bishop’s Palace”, where she was likely staying in the Bishop of Winchester’s own private chambers, since this is where royalty normally stayed when they were hosted by the Bishop. John Elder also reports that at 10pm that evening Philip “was brought by the council a privy way to the Queen, where her Grace very lovingly, yea, and most joyfully received him. And after they had talked together half an hour they kissed, and departed.” They also shared a moment that will resound with the romantic in all of us; Elder writes that “at [Philip’s] departing he desired the Queen’s Highness to teach him what he should say to the lords in English, at his departing, and she told him he should say ‘good night, my lords all.’” As he came by the lords, he said as the queen had taught him. What a sweet moment for the bride and groom to share days before their wedding! At 3pm the next day – that would be July 24th, the day before their wedding – Philip made his way to Wolvesey again to see Mary, who met him in the hall. In a missive to the Holy Roman Emperor – Philip’s father Charles V – we learn that Philip had walked from the Deanery “by way of some gardens” to see Mary to discuss with her his new title of King of Naples, a wedding present from his father. The same missive tells us that Philip “bore himself with [Mary] and with her ladies so gallantly, with so gracious a manner, that all present were delighted and called down a thousand blessings on his head.” As we can see here, it was at Wolvesey that Mary and Philip had their first conversations as a betrothed couple. The appendix to the Chronicle of Queen Jane – a Marian chronicle – details part of the wedding banquet, though of course this account must be taken with a grain of salt because though it is “the official account recorded by the English heralds”, the Victorian compilers of this appendix note that they had “not been able to discover the original or contemporary manuscript; but there are several copies of it both at the College of Arms and the British Museum, some of them less complete from abridgment.” Nevertheless, this account is given to us by Edward Underhill, who says that “on the marriage day, the king and the queen dined in the hall in the Bishop’s palace, sitting under the cloth of estate”. He describes how “the second course at the marriage of a king [or in this case a queen!] is given unto the bearers” but he quickly clarifies that by that he means “the meat, but not the dishes, for they were of gold”. Of particular note to many was that Mary ate off gold plate while Philip ate off silver. They were, after all, in England and Mary was the reigning monarch in England while Philip was merely her consort. Had they been in Philip’s territories, Philip would have eaten off gold plate and Mary off silver. I find it so fascinating that even the plates are a symbol of status! Interestingly, though, this history isn’t particularly highlighted at Wolvesey these days. The English Heritage website mentions Mary’s stay there only briefly, highlighting the wedding feast that occurred after the wedding in the Cathedral. Their larger history of Wolvesey doesn’t mention Mary at all! This larger history is based on the interpretive placards around the site today, and it’s significant that these placards portray the medieval history more than the early modern. Now, I might be biased because I do quite enjoy everything Mary-related, but if I were designing interpretive placards for a site which hosted the wedding feast of England’s first crowned queen regnant to England’s first king consort, I’d most certainly highlight it! In any case, the majority of Wolvesey’s interpretation of Mary is found in a brief paragraph on their website and not at the site itself. Next time you’re in Winchester, why not make a stop at Wolvesey Castle and try to imagine the luxury and splendour it would have contained when Mary was housed there before the wedding. And what a different place it would have been on July 25th 1554 with all the silver and gold plate reflecting all the candlelight. And when you’re reading the signs around the site, remember that this is a significant spot for Mary, too. Content warning: Some people may find the nest section uncomfortable. It concerns phantom pregnancies. If you wish to avoid this section, please skip to ‘end of content warning’. The other site which hosted a significant event in Mary’s regnal life was Hampton Court Palace, where she stayed throughout the last few months of her supposed pregnancy in 1554-1555. You might be wondering why I’ve just said ‘supposed’ pregnancy.
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